5 min read
How to name your blocks for your sport
Rename Prep, Drills, Lifting and Other to fit your sport, pick their colors, and give a stretch of blocks a phase name.
Every program in Coach Reps is a calendar of blocks. To start, they’re called Prep, Drills, Lifting and Other. Those names fit a weight room. They may not fit your sport.
The head coach can rename them, recolor them and add more. Here’s how to set them up so the calendar reads the way your staff talks.
Categories and phases do different jobs
There are two ways to name blocks:
- A category is a kind of block, like Lifting. The head coach sets the categories once, in Settings, for the whole staff.
- A phase name is a label on certain blocks, like Triphasic on four weeks of Lifting. Any coach can add one on the calendar, and the blocks stay in their category.
Use categories for the parts of every session. Use phase names for what a stretch of training is about.
Pick names your athletes know
Name the categories for the parts of a session your athletes already know. A few ways a staff might set them up:
- Baseball: Prep, Throwing, Lifting, Arm Care.
- Football: Prep, Speed, Lifting, Conditioning.
- Volleyball: Prep, Jumps, Lifting, Mobility.
- Track: Warm-up, Sprints, Lifting, Recovery.
Think about what an athlete reads on their phone before a session. Arm Care tells them what’s coming. Other doesn’t.
Keep the names short. A day on the calendar is narrow, and a long name gets cut off.
Rename and recolor them
Open Settings
Click Settings in the sidebar, then Programming. Only head coaches see this section.
Open the category list
Click Category Banners. Each category has a name and a row of 11 colors.
Type the new name
Drills can become Throwing, Speed or whatever your sport uses.
Pick a color
Day Preview shows how the blocks will look.
Save your changes
Click Save Changes, and every coach on your staff gets the new names and colors.
Don’t mix this up with Categories, the section above it in Settings. That one holds your athlete groups, like a team and its positions.
Add more of your own
Categories 1 to 4 always have a name. Category 5 and Category 6 are there too, blank until you name them. A slot you leave blank stays hidden.
Need more than six? Ask us, and we can turn on two more for your facility.
Rename before you build
Set your names before you build your first programs. A block keeps the category name it had when it was made. So if you rename Drills to Speed later, the Drills blocks already on the calendar keep the old name. They also turn gray, because no category has that name anymore.
New blocks get the new name. Templates work the same way: a template keeps the names it was saved with.
Changing only a color is safe at any time. Every block of that category picks up the new color, on your calendar and on your athletes’ phones.
Name a stretch of blocks as a phase
Select the blocks
Hold Shift and click each block you want. They need to be the same category, like all Lifting.
Right-click one of them
Pick Rename Phase. If the blocks are mixed, it’s grayed out.
Type the phase name
Keep it short, up to 40 characters, like Triphasic or Base strength.
Add a note if you want
The athlete sees it at the top of the block.
Save it
Click Save Phase, and the blocks show the new name on the calendar.
To change it later, right-click the blocks and pick Edit Phase. Remove Phase takes the name off. A copy and paste carries the phase name and its note. A template keeps the name but not the note.
What your athletes see
In today’s workout, on the phone and on the web, a named block shows its phase name first, with its category beside it. The color always comes from the category, so a Triphasic block still looks like Lifting.
On your side, the menu you get when you right-click a block names its true category at the top. You won’t lose track of what a block really is.
The short version
- Categories are the kinds of blocks. The head coach sets them in Settings, under Programming.
- Rename and recolor them for your sport, and use up to six.
- Set the names before you build, because a block keeps the name it was made with.
- Use a phase name for a stretch of blocks, like Triphasic.
- Athletes see the phase name first, in the category’s color.
Keep reading
How to program plyo balls and bands with your own loads
Add your own loads, like plyo ball colors or band sizes, pick one for each set, and athletes see it right on their phone.
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How to set up templates for a whole season
Save the weeks you run every year as templates, then place a whole phase on any date, for one athlete or a group.
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See it with your own program
Book a demo and we’ll walk you through it with your sport and your roster.